OUR STORY
THE STORY OF ALBERTO’S CHURROS BEGAN MORE THAN 20 YEARS AGO…
ALBERTO Araujo met his future bride Elsa while they were both working in a Buenos Aires bookstore in 1968. The happy couple soon began their adventure as a married couple when they moved to California before relocating to Washington State in 1972. Before long, the Araujos became a family with a daughter, a son, and a new bakery in Seattle’s University District.
In 1995, the Araujos began planning for a new adventure: Selling homemade, wholesale churros to local restaurants. Remembering the churros of Argentina, Elsa and Alberto developed a remarkably clean recipe that is completely vegan and involves no artificial ingredients or flavors. The team would hand-craft the churros in the bakery, freeze the dough at the peak of freshness, and provide the ready-to-fry product to commercial kitchens.
THE family officially debuted their take on the Latin classic to the American market in 1996 – delivering boxes to restaurants with coolers in a pick-up truck. Puget Sound restaurants fell in love with the Araujo family recipe and quickly took to the concept of 100% authentic churros with an extended shelf life that could be fried and served fresh to customers on-demand. Alberto’s soon left the bakery business to focus strictly on perfecting their churros.
Relocating to Edmonds, Washington in 1996, Elsa and Alberto solidified the business one customer at a time with their unique and high quality product. They graduated to cargo vans equipped with freezers and their own logo to transport the churros across Western Washington, from Bellingham, to Issaquah to Tacoma.
IN 1997 the business was awarded the Minority Enterprise Award, which Governor Gary Locke himself presented to the couple. The Seattle Times wrote a glowing article about this bottom-up success story. The business received much-deserved notoriety and publicity. Soon, Alberto’s would be doing business with major distribution companies in the Seattle area, including Crown Pacific Fine Foods, Sysco and Food Services of America.
Despite Alberto’s passing in 2003, Elsa was able to continue the business herself for many years. Alberto’s Churros continued to grow in the 2000s by maintaining its fidelity to the fresh, authentic, family-recipe but also by innovating new product ideas. By the end of the decade, Alberto’s was offering filled churros in four new flavors: bavarian cream, cajeta (caramel), strawberry and guava.
IN 2018, Elsa, now joined by her son Steven, began the project of cooking the churros in house and offering a more versatile product that could be heated up quicker in the fryer or now in the oven. This new versatility has opened up many new doors and opportunities. Recently, Alberto’s has extended beyond Washington State to Illinois and Nevada, and the future looks even more promising. In the meantime, Alberto’s has added a new, chocolate-filled churro, going back to its Spanish roots, where “churros con chocolate” is a national tradition.
Alberto’s Churros is proud that they have always offered a high quality authentic product. Today, now that churros have grown exponentially in popularity, this quality is even more evident. The public can no longer be fooled by the imitation churro! Alberto’s is happy to continue the tradition and carry on the legacy in restaurants nationwide.